Avid Profile supports The Sound of Change

Avid’s VENUE Profile systems were used to mix the 1 June global concert, The Sound of Change, at London’s Twickenham Stadium. The concert featured sets from a host of international stars including Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, Florence and the Machine, Jennifer Lopez, John Legend and Rita Ora, and marked the launch of a new global campaign by Gucci to raise funds and awareness for girls’ and women’s empowerment. Live sound for the event was managed by Britannia Row Productions who opted for a configuration of six Avid VENUE Profile systems for the main show and two additional systems for Jennifer Lopez’ on-site rehearsal. “There were 11 full bands playing over four hours, so the show was comparable to Live Aid in terms of scale,” said Lez Dwight, project manager at Britannia Row Productions. “VENUE is very popular with artists and is a proven product. It’s easy to set up and has a small footprint. All in all with so many VENUE consoles on site, it was a big day for Avid.” Jim Baggot, production director for the event commented: “I think what’s worked really well is that a lot of the acts asked for them, and we wanted to provide them because they are very versatile and they link very well. It’s helped us a lot with how we’re running the show.” For David Haines, FOH engineer for John Legend, having a familiar console was key to managing the quick turnaround time between each act: “I love the Profile, I love the VENUE system and I’m the most familiar with it. It sounds great, has a lot of great features and great tech support,” said Haines. “The speed is the main thing that I love; it’s the closest thing to an analogue console in the digital realm that I’ve seen and it does a good job of living in both worlds in a way that I feel other digital consoles don’t.” Rita Ora’s FOH engineer, Chris ‘Bronski’ Jablonski added: “For me there’s no other digital console that has snapshots as reassuring as the Profile does. You look at that page, you see your snapshot and you see what’s going on.” For Ora’s performance, Bronski also used a selection of Waves plugins including the C6 multiband compressor, SSL Bus Compresor, Renaissance Bass, and H-Comp hybrid compressor. Britania Row’s sound reinforcement system comprised a main L&R hang of L-Acoustics K1 and K1SB elements, and a side L&R hang of V-DOSC and dV-DOSC elements. On the delay system was Turbosound Flashline TFS900H elements with TFS900B subs. The majority of the performers were using Sennheiser SKM 5200 microphones with 5235 heads with the exception of Ellie Goulding, who used a DPA d:facto vocal microphone. A combination of Sennheiser and Shure microphones were deployed for the presenters, with Sennheiser 2000 IEMs. Summing up the day’s event, Haines concluded: “This is really well run; not only are there a lot of acts with short sets, but each act is performing a lot of songs – six songs in 15 minutes! It’s very cool to see this much talent and to try and put the spotlight on women’s issues globally, that’s amazing. It’s good to see an event like this.” www.avid.com The Sound for Change concert was broadcast live to over 150 countries worldwide. For a full broadcast report, see PSNEurope’s July digital edition.

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